International Documentary Competition
Andrzej Fidyk
Chairperson
Poland
Film director and screenwriter. He has made 40 documentary films as well as many commercials and television features. He has won several awards at international film festivals. He was head of the Documentary Film Section of Channel 1 of the Polish Television until 2016. He is a three-time winner of the Victor award in the category of a television artist. He is a professor of film art, head of the Film Directing Specialisation at the University of Silesia in Katowice and a member of the Polish and European Film Academy.
Karen Avetisyan
Armenia
Artistic director and general director of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Erevan. He is an author of articles, radio commentaries, film reviews, essays and creative non-fiction stories. He is a member of the Association of Film Professionals, the Armenian Association of Film Critics and Journalists and the International Federation of Film Journalists (FIPRESCI). He has been on jury panels of numerous international film festivals. He is a member of the European Film Academy.
Mette Hoffmann Meyer
Denmark
Film producer and ordering editor. She was head of Documentary and Coproduction at the Danish Public Television and an editor of the Documania fact series. At present, she is a founder and president of the THE WHY foundation based in Copenhagen in Denmark which produces and distributes 10-20 human rights documentaries per year. She has financed such films as Oscar-winning ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’, ‘Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer’ and ‘The Red Chapel’ awarded at Sundance. Her first campaign WHY; Why poverty?, a series of 8 films, was aired by 70 broadcasters reaching over 500 million people across the world.
Ada Solomon
Romania
Film producer and founder of Hi Film Productions and Micro Film. Her films have been screened and awarded at the most prestigious film events, including festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Venice and Sundance. She has been a co-producer of films made in collaboration with over 15 European countries and produced films in more than 50 countries. She is executive director of the Women’s European Audiovisual Network, a national coordinator of EAVE, member of the board of ACE and member of the board of the European Film Academy. She has been awarded the European Award for Co-production – Prix Eurimages in 2013 and the Central Europe Initiative Award at the Film Festival in Trieste in 2018.
International Short Film Competition
Jan Naszewski
Chairperson
Poland
Sales agent and founder of New Europe Film Sales, a leading international film sales agency based in Warsaw. The company specialises in the promotion and sales of short and feature films. NEFS’s portfolio includes ‘Corpus Christi’, an Oscar nominee directed by Jan Komasa, ‘Rams’ by Grímur Hákonarson – the winner of the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, ‘Lamb’ by Valdimar Jóhannsson and the latest animation of the authors of ‘Your Vincent’ – ‘The Peasants’. He studied linguistics and European studies in Edinburgh. He worked as an organiser of film events at the New Horizons International Film Festival. He is a teacher at prestigious international programmes, such as EAVE, ACE, Berlinale Talents or Torino Film Lab. For a number of years, he has been an expert of the MEDIA programme.
Isabelle Favez
Switzerland
Animator and film director born in 1974 in Bern. She studied at the Film and Video Faculty of Zurich University of the Arts. Her graduate film ‘Replay’ (1999) was screened at numerous international festivals. She made several films for children, including ‘Circuit Marine’ (2003), as part of her artistic residency at the Folimage animation studio in Valence, and the award winning picture ‘Apple Pie’ (2006). In 2018 she directed Zibilla, a television programme shown for the first time at the International Film Festival in Berlin in 2019.
Anne Gaschütz
Germany
Festival organiser and programmer. She has lived in Germany and England and studied film in Wales. She has worked as an assistant and production manager on numerous short film projects. Since 2013, as part of the International Selection Committee FILMFEST DRESDEN – the International Short Film Festival, she has been responsible for the coordination of the festival and the Visegrád in Short(s) forum and in July 2020 she became the festival’s co-director. In 2021 she became a member of the Pardi di domani Selection Comittee at the Locarno Film Festival. She is also a founder of Talking Shorts, an online platform of short film criticism.
Brigid O’Shea
Germany, Australia
Tutor, lecturer and film producer. Originally from Australia, she has been working and living in Berlin since 2005. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Melbourne and Berlin, she started her career working at Berlinale. Then she worked on many documentary programmes, including IDF – the Institute of Documentary Film and Documentary Campus. In late 2014 she became head of DOK Industry Programme. She is a mentor in the area of European film funds, culture and festival strategy management in North America and Eastern Europe. In February 2020 she participated in the creation of the Documentary Association of Europe.enia Documentary Association of Europe.
National Competition – short films
Jagoda Szelc
Chairperson
Poland
Film director and screenwriter. She is a graduate of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and the Film and Television Direction Department of Lodz Film School. She has been a fellow at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received a scholarship from the Polish Minister of Culture. Her films have been screened at international festivals. Her short film ‘Such a Landscape’ won a Golden Tadpole for the best student film at the Camerimage festival (2013) and her feature debut ‘Tower. A Bright Day’ received an award for the best debut and screenplay at the 42nd Polish Film Festival in Gdynia (2017), along with many international prizes. In 2018 she won the prestigious Passport award presented by the Polityka weekly. In the same year she completed her second feature film ‘Monument’, recognised in Poland and abroad. She teaches film directing at Lodz Film School.
Damian Kocur
Poland
Film director, cameraman and screenwriter. He is a graduate of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School of the University of Silesia in Katowice and a PhD student
of Lodz Film School. He is an author of short films awarded in Poland and abroad. His recent picture ‘Beyond is the Day’ was recognised as the best short film at the festivals in Trieste and Teheran, the best European film at Clermont-Ferrand and qualified for a nomination to the European Film Award. In 2001 it was screened at the New Directors/New Films in MoMa in New York.
Joanna Wendorff-Ostergaart
Poland
Producer and screenplay consultant. In 2006-2014 she was head of Media Desk Poland and in 2016 – representative of the Director of the Polish Film Institute in charge of Foreign Institutional Collaboration. For many years she was a co-owner and head of production at Anima-Pol Film Studio. A Creative Supervisor for Disney’s projects at SDI Media Poland, she currently collaborates with John Weston Group as a storytelling expert for international companies and brands. She is a member of the Polish Filmmakers Association and a lecturer at Lodz Film School.
National Competition – documentaries
Maciej Cuske
Chairperson
Poland
Film director, born and living in Bydgoszcz. In 2004 he graduated from the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, where he currently works as a lecturer. He also teaches at the Film School in Gdynia and offers film workshops in Poland and abroad. He is a co-creator of the Bydgoszcz Film Chronicle which offers space for young filmmakers at the Municipal Cultural Centre in Bydgoszcz. He directed many award-winning films screened at Polish and international film festivals which were honoured with, among others, the Bronze and Silver Hobby Horses and the Silver Horn at the Krakow Film Festival as well as the Eagle Awards of the Polish Film Academy in 2021. He was recognised as the best director in 2021 at the West Lake Film Festival in China. He is an expert of the Polish Film Institute and a member of the Polish Film Academy. In 2020 he was nominated to the Passport award presented by the Polityka weekly.
Maciej Kubicki
Poland
Film and television producer, screenwriter. He is a graduate of the Wajda School and the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University, the EAVE film production course and workshops offered by Torinofilmlab, MIDPOINT, EX Oriente and DOK Incubator. He received the KIPA award for the best documentary film producer, won the title of the Emerging Producer 2017 and was nominated to the Eagle Award for ‘Over the Limit’. He is a member of Emmy and the Polish and European Film Academy. A co-owner and board member of Telemark, he develops and produces creative documentaries, premium television series and arthouse films in collaboration with Anna Kępińska. He also works as a storyliner and directs a writer’s room of premium television series. For 9 years he has been offering a workshop on premium television series creation at Lodz Film School.
Ita Zbroniec-Zajt
Poland
Cinematographer, living in Sweden. She is a graduate of the Direction of Photography Department of Lodz Film School. She won the Guldabagge Award (Swedish Oscar) for her photography to ‘The Yard’ directed by Måns Månsson as the first woman awarded in this category. She received the Sven Nykvist Award for the best cinematography in the film ‘Season’ directed by John Skoog and, together with director Anna Jadowska, the Golden Frog for ‘The Woman on the Roof’ recognised as the best Polish film at the Camerimage festival. She works on feature films, documentaries and commercials.
International competition DocFilmMusic
Leszek Dawid
Chairperson
Poland
Director and screenwriter. He is a graduate of English Philology at the University of Wrocław, the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing and the Film and Television Direction Department of Lodz Film School. A member of the Film Academy, the Directors’ Guild of Poland and the Polish Film Academy, he was a fellow of the Nipkow programme in Berlin and the Young Academy of Art in Berlin. He is a lecturer and Deputy Dean of the Film and Television Direction Department of Lodz Film School and the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. He has made a number of award-winning short films, documentaries, feature films, television series and television theatre plays. He received two nominations to the Passport award presented by the Polityka weekly. He was nominated to the Eagle Award in the categories of the discovery of the year, the best director, the best film and the best television series.
Jinsu Chun
South Korea
Programmer. He studied philosophy and documentary film at Paris University in France. He has worked as a director’s assistant and music producer. In 2006-2019 he was a programmer at the Jecheon International Music & Film Festival. Since 2020 he has been a programmer at the Jeonju International Film Festival.
Lucie Králová
Czech Republic
Film director and screenwriter. She works as a lecturer at FAMU in Prague. Her documentaries, often made on a 16 mm film, have been screened and awarded at many international festivals. ‘Ill-fated Child’ (2003) and ‘Sold’ (2005) were awarded as the best Czech documentaries at the Jihlava International Film Festival. Her documentary detective film ‘Lost Holiday’ (2007), distributed internationally on a 35 mm film, won the Crystal Globe for the best feature documentary at Karlove Vary IFF, along with many other distinctions. Her documentary ‘Kapr code’ won the DocFilmMusic competition at the Krakow Film Festival in 2022.